KABUL, Oct 27 (AFP) - Hamid Karzai, who has led Afghanistan's interim government since the Taliban's collapse three years ago, was just days away from being declared his country's first popularly elected leader.
The election commission "has told us they will announce the results on Sunday," Karzai told visiting Italian deputy foreign minister Margherita Boniver, according to press adviser Khaleeq Ahmad.
"Once the results are in and I am the winner, then I will celebrate," he said at the talks Tuesday in the heavily-guarded presidential palace.
"I will then take as my first priority to work on building my cabinet."
The near-complete count of some eight million votes cast on October 9 awaited Wednesday a decision on dozens of still-quarantined ballot boxes.
"Some of them were just blindingly ballot-stuffed," election operations chief David Avery told AFP.
But with the isolated votes "a very small number," according to election adviser Silvana Puizina, Karzai's landslide victory was virtually intact.
With 55.5 percent of votes from the historic ballot and a 39.3 percentage point lead on closest rival Yunus Qanooni, Karzai is the unchallenged winner.
An international inquiry into complaints by his rivals of irregularities was expected to conclude by Thursday, spokesman for the joint UN-Afghan elections commission Sultan Baheen said.
The commission has also held its own probe and needs to assess the outcomes of both inquiries before certifying the ballot.
"There won't be any declaration of final results until they are satisfied they have all the information that allows them to make a declaration of results in an informed way," Puizina said.
Karzai's inauguration and the formation of his cabinet will be another month off, under election rules.
Karzai, 46, is the head of an ethnic Pashtun clan which has long been powerful in southern Afghanistan and is linked to its former monarchy.
He was deputy foreign minister briefly between the collapse of the communist-backed regime in 1992 and the Taliban's takeover in 1996. He rejected the hardline Islamic clergy's offer to represent them at the United Nations.
He blamed the Taliban for the assassination of his father, a former legislator, in 1999 in Pakistan. Two years later Karzai led a rebellion against the Taliban in central Uruzgan province as US-led forces launched a military campaign to oust the hardliners for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden.
Karzai will rule for five years, with two vice presidents: strongman Karim Khalili and Ahmad Zia Masood, the brother of late resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood. Both are from minority ethnic groups.
Under Afghanistan's 10-month old constitution, he will rule with a two-house parliament.
Karzai will also be military commander-in-chief, and empowered to appoint ministers, the attorney general, the head of the central bank, and supreme court judges.
Those appointments must be approved by the lower house.
Qanooni, the favourite of the powerful anti-Taliban alliance of commanders, and 13 opposition candidates complained of widespread fraud, prompting the United Nations to form a panel of electoral experts to investigate. Karzai's rivals then withdrew boycott threats pending the panel's outcome.
The first vote in Afghanistan's history has dramatically mirrored ethnic and regional faultlines, with Karzai sweeping the Pashtun heartlands of the southeast and parts of the west.
Qanooni and Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam dominated the north where their Tajik and Uzbek supporters are in the majority.
Warlord of the Hazara ethnic minority Mohammad Mohaqeq cleaned up in the Hazara-dominated central provinces of Bamiyan and Daikondi.
The only woman to run for election, paediatrician Masooda Jalal, polled sixth, beating 12 candidates.

10/27/2004 01:31 GMT - AFP